Indians stole everything we had; then we were, of course, unable to
proceed on our journey, and so we returned to McDonald’s place and
remained there a week. There was a government surveying party making
their headquarters there then. McDonald and the surveyors explained
to the Indians that we were on our way to the Pacific coast, and the
consequence was that we recovered our property; also the Indians gave
us the right of way to cross their country the same as the Hudson
Bay people had. Starting out again, one day we met an old half-breed
carrying mail, who misdirected us as to the way we should go and, when
it was time to camp, there was neither water nor fuel to be had, and
a foot of snow was on the ground, and it was several degrees below
zero. It was twelve o’clock at night before we found a place to camp
where there was wood and water. We turned our animals out to eat
rushes, which were plentiful. At daybreak the next morning, the oxen
came running madly out of the timber with three moose after them,
evidently the moose thinking that the oxen were of their own species.
The oxen stampeded and the moose were right behind them, keeping them
going through the deep snow, until all were out of sight. Two of the
Frenchmen followed and were gone the entire day without having first
had their breakfast, and it was about midnight when they returned with
the oxen, after having followed them and the moose for at least thirty
miles, and when they caught up with the outfit the moose were still
with the oxen. On account of this chase it became necessary for us to
stay in camp for a couple of days to allow the men and the oxen to
rest themselves. Finally we arrived at Pembina, where Joe Rolette kept
a trading post. He was pretty well fixed financially. After staying at
Rolette’s place for a few days, we crossed the Red river on the ice,
destined for Fort Geary (now Winnipeg), which was supposed to be about
sixty miles from Pembina, and which place we reached about Christmas.
At Fort Geary everybody spoke French, with the exception of some
English soldiers stationed there.
As by that time winter had set in and the snow was getting deep, we
concluded to stay there until spring. Bill Fairweather and I went to
work cutting logs for a man named McDonald. We hewed the logs on four
sides, for which we received fifty cents for every ten feet, running
measure. We worked there until spring (1859) and made considerable
money.
Early that spring Bill Sweeney, Henry Edgar, Bill Fairweather, George
White, Tom Healy, and others of the party, started on their western
journey by the Kootenai pass. Larry Campbell (who used to keep a
store at Diamond City, in Meagher county), Jack Brash, Sandy Gibson,
Jim Wandel, Bill Smith and I decided to take the Milk river route,
and thence down the Blackfoot river on the Pacific side of the Rocky
mountains. After arriving on the Assiniboine river, we camped there
for a few days. Here we met one of the Catholic fathers, with whom we
signed an agreement to raft logs down the Assiniboine river and deliver
them by the middle of May. As we were all good river men, we did very
well. The logs were to be used to build the Palestine Mission. At that
time there was an American named John Morgan who was a trader for the
American Fur company at Fort Union, and who was married to a daughter
of Chief Firewind of the Assiniboine tribe. Morgan had started another
trading post on the Canada side, he being an American, having come
from the state of Ohio. We bought what goods we needed from him. His
mother-in-law came over frequently on a visit, and, as we stopped at
Morgan’s place during most of the winter, she got to know us very well,
and, owing to the further fact that we were the very best of friends
with Morgan, she naturally took a liking to us.
About the first of April I came to Morgan’s trading post to get a stock
of provisions to use on the rafting trips. Morgan had gone to Fort
Geary and the old lady was left in charge of the goods. Morgan had told
her to let the American boys have anything they wanted. I remained
there until Morgan returned, and during this time the old woman treated
me kindly. Shortly after his return, he said to me, “Now, Mr. Brown,
the old lady is going back home in a couple of days and, as you will
be going that way, she might be of some service to you. It would be a
good idea for you to make her a small present.” I was pretty flush with
money, so I bought her a couple of dresses and a Cree war blanket for
her to give to the chief, and a lot of beads and trinkets, amounting
probably to twenty-five dollars for the whole outfit. In a few days she
left for her home camp on the American side.
About the first of May we got through rafting and started westward.
Some days we would travel but ten miles. Buffalo were plenty and we
killed fat ones and dried the meat to use on our journey. On the 25th
of May we espied an Assiniboine Indian coming towards us; he was on
horseback. Presently we saw another, by and by another, and they kept
on increasing. We had plenty of ammunition, but they were ten to our
one. Well, they captured us, took us to their camp as prisoners and
held a war dance over us and threatened to kill us. They stripped us
of everything we had, clothing and all. Just then it happened that the
old squaw to whom I made those presents was in the Indian camp, and
when she saw me she ran and placed her hands upon my neck and kissed
me and conducted us to the chief’s tent, which was also her own, and
she cooked dinner for us. Then she brought out the articles that I had
given her at Morgan’s trading post, and she held in her hand the Cree
war blanket and the pipe that I gave her to hand to the chief, while
at the same time she was pointing to me and telling him that I was the
man that gave them. After that I was at liberty to go around the camp
and out hunting, and so forth, but my companions were put in a tepee
and a guard kept over them night and day. At that time we did not know
whether we were in the British possessions or on the American side. We
were captured close to what is known as the Widow mountain. We were
kept prisoners for six weeks and shamefully treated during this time.
The poor old squaw worried a great deal on account of the condition we
were in. She could talk a few words of English, and she did all she
could to console us by telling us that we would not be killed, and so
on. I am satisfied that she was the cause of our not being murdered at
the time they stripped us.
When Major Schoonover, who was Indian agent at Fort Union, heard of
our being captured, he sent out his interpreter to tell Firewind and
Antelope, both Assiniboine chiefs, to bring in the white prisoners
to him, and that unless they did so they would get no annuities for
that year. We were about two weeks getting in; we reached Fort Union
on the morning of the 4th of July. We related to Major Schoonover all
the facts in relation to our having been taken prisoners, and where we
were from and where we were going. He took us up-stairs to his room and
said, “Well, boys, this is the 4th of July.” We had lost track of the
day of the month, and did not know that it was the 4th of July until
then. He treated each of us to a good drink of brandy. He asked me
where my home was, and I told him that my parents lived in the city of
Providence, Rhode Island. He asked the others the same question. Well,
Bill Smith was from Baltimore, Jim Wendall from Piclo, Nova Scotia (he
was killed in 1863 by Slade, a desperado, when on a freighting trip
from Cow Island; Slade was afterwards hanged in Virginia City by the
vigilantes). All the others were from Canada. The only true American in
the lot was Bill Smith. I was born in Ireland, being three years old
when my parents came to Providence.
The major sent for all the chiefs and had a council with them, at
which we were present. He told them that we were going across into
Washington territory, and that he wanted them to give us the right to
cross the country and not detain us again; and he further told them to
bring everything that they took from us or he would have to give us
goods out of their annuities. The Indians returned to us all of our
property and promised not to trouble us any more. The old squaw, when
we were leaving, came and shook hands with all of us and expressed
gratification at our being safe. We came up the Milk river valley. At
the big bend, near what is now Fort Browning, I first saw a grizzly
bear. From there we came to Fort Benton and remained there until the
spring of 1860.
Captain Mullan was then constructing the Mullan road from Walla Walla
to Fort Benton. He wanted men to build bridges, and, as we were all
good ax men, we hired out to him. Major Blake had command of several
companies of recruits that came up the river to Fort Benton. They were
on their way to Colville, Washington territory. The only houses I saw
then between Fort Benton and Missoula were those of Johnny Grant, a
half-breed who lived at Deer Lodge, and Bob Dempsey, an old discharged
soldier, who lived between Gold Creek and what is now Radersburg. He
had an Indian woman for a wife. That summer we built a bridge over the
Blackfoot river and another over the Big Blackfoot. There were but
few white people living there then. I remember Captain Higgins, Baron
O’Keefe and old man Moues, who was running a kind of mill and grinding
meal for the Indians, and Lou Brown, a Hudson Bay trader, who took
charge of a ferry that Mullan built. There were few other white men who
lived there then. We went clear through to the Coeur d’Alene; we got
there in the month of September. From there we went to Wolf Lodge and
crossed the St. Joe river and went down by where the city of Spokane
now is; thence to Walla Walla, where we arrived on the 8th of October,
1860. There we separated, John Peterson, who was with me, working for
Mullan, and I went to the Dalles in Oregon.
From there I went to the Cascade Falls on the Columbia river. That fall
I voted for Stephen A. Douglas for president. When at the Cascades,
I worked for the Oregon Navigation company, hewing timber for ship
building, for which I received twenty-five cents per foot. At this
place myself and two other men hewed a remarkable stick of timber, it
being one hundred and thirty feet in length and four feet square. After
the hewing was done, we sawed it lengthways into two pieces. The sawing
was done by hand (whipsawing), there being no sawmills in the country
at that time.
Those two huge timbers were used in the building of a steamboat that
was to be operated on the upper Columbia river. I worked here until
late in the spring of 1861. The following summer I went prospecting
on John Day’s river. Finding nothing that would pay, I went to Walla
Walla, and remained there during the winter of 1861-2. That winter
there was four feet of snow on the level. It was the worst and deepest
snow I ever saw in my life. Mr. Gerald, a gentleman with whom I was
well acquainted, had twenty-three hundred head of beef steers near
Walla Walla; he was furnishing beef for the miners in the Salmon
river and the Kootenay country. At that time you could buy five and
six-year-old steers in Walla Walla for seven dollars per head. Gerald
had several hundred tons of hay put up to feed during the winter; hay
and grass were plentiful everywhere, but, for all that, most of the
live stock in that country perished from cold and deep snows. You would
see those big wild steers coming up the street and eating the cards
that had been thrown out of the gambling houses. Gerald told me that
out of the 2,300 cattle, and after feeding all the hay, he had but
sixty-three cattle in the spring. Wood went up to $80 a cord in Walla
Walla, and flour $30 per hundred pounds. Steamboats could not get up
and there were no animals to haul the freight. Men used to go thirty
miles to Walula to get a sack of flour and packed it on their backs.
In the early part of the winter I furnished a man named Fox with six
months’ provisions to go prospecting with John Peeterson on the North
fork of the John Day river. In the spring of 1862 I received news from
Peeterson stating that they had struck good diggings on Granite creek
and for me to come at once. I went from Walla Walla to where Peeterson
was. We mined there until fall and did very well, when we sold out for
$1,500 to Eph Day, who at one time was the treasurer of the Oregon
Navigation company. I suggested to Peeterson that we had better go next
to the Fort Benton country, and we decided to do so and started on our
journey. Finally we got to Gold Creek. Jack Dunn was there, keeping a
store. Jim and Granville Stuart were there. I remember giving Granville
the Sacramento Union and he was very glad to get it, for newspapers
were very scarce in the camp. They were the men that first found gold
in paying quantities in Gold creek, and, for that matter, in the state
of Montana, although “Gold Tom,” an old trapper, had found a fair
prospect in Gold creek before the Stuarts did. And there I met my old
friend, Bill Fairweather, whom I had not seen since we parted at Fort
Geary over three years before. A few weeks later I met Bill Sweeney at
Bannock.
As I desired to go prospecting east of the Rocky mountain range, I
left Bannock about the latter part of October, 1862, in company with
John Peeterson and Thomas Thomas. On top of the main range, and where
the Mullan road crosses, we met the old frontiersman, John Jacobs. He
told us that Captain Fisk, in company with a lot of immigrants from
Minnesota, were in camp in the Prickly Pear valley. I went to their
camp, which was near to what is now called Montana Bar. James King
and W. C. Gillette were there with a lot of flour; from them I bought
a sack to go prospecting. With the same outfit came Jesse Cox, Jim
Wiley, Albert Agnel, Jim Norton, Charles Cary, Alvin H. Wilcox, A.
McNeal, James Fergus, Bob Ells, old man Olan and old man Dalton. They
and others were in camp and had not decided where to go next. John
Peeterson, Thomas Thomas, Jim and Bill Buchanan, Dick Merrill and I did
some prospecting there that fall and got considerable gold.
Late in the fall, myself, a man named Thebeau, Nickolos Bird, and a
fellow by the name of Gervais, who could talk the Flathead language,
went off with the Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles Indians to prospect the
country they were going to travel through that winter. The Indians were
on the way to the Musselshell country to hunt buffaloes. At this time
the Flatheads and Piegans were at war with each other.
All the Indians, who numbered from eight to twelve hundred, went
through what is now called Confederate gulch. We found good prospects
there, but the Indians would not let us stay. It appeared that they had
some kind of an understanding with the Crow Indians to go and hunt in
that part of the country, but not to encourage any whites to go there,
consequently we had to move whenever the Indians would move, and, by
this time, they would not let us go back. We camped for several days on
the little prairie at the head of Smith river, near where White Sulphur
Springs, the county seat of Meagher county, now is. There the Indians
had a buffalo hunt and killed many. After that we went down Shields’
river and made three camps there. During all this time the Indians
were killing buffalo and drying the meat. At the mouth of Shields’
river we saw a large war party of Crows trying to capture some of the
Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles who were out hunting, and who belonged
to the Indians we were with. We camped near where there was a lot of
willows. Moise, the head chief of the Flatheads, came and asked me if
I would fight; I said yes, and he said, “That is good.” I had a good
rifle and two revolvers. Soon our Indians got together and prepared for
a battle, but the Crows did not follow, and it was good for them, for
the Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles were well armed and mounted on good
horses and were eager for a fight. That night they placed their horses
inside the camp and put pickets out in as good way as I ever saw in my
life, but the enemy did not make an attack. From there we went east of
the Little Snowys. There we met a war party of Piegans coming around
what is called Wolfe mountain; there were about thirty of them. They
came to our camp to stop all night, and were received as friends, and
they played games during the evening with the Pend d’Oreilles. About
midnight the Piegans sneaked out and stampeded many of the best horses
belonging to the Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles and started away with
them. Chief Moise at once blew a horn and his son beat a kind of drum;
this aroused the whole camp. The Pend d’Oreilles and Flathead warriors
were in an instant on their best horses and went after the Piegans and
captured them all and recovered the stolen horses and brought them to
camp. The Pend d’Oreilles wanted to kill the Piegan thieves, but Chief
Moise said, “No, we will not kill them, though they are dogs. They came
to our tepees as friends, but at the time they were deceiving us. They
are dogs; they came to our camp and we treated them as friends, but
they got up in the dark of the night and stole our horses. No, we will
not kill them, but we will mark them.” Then he ordered his warriors to
bring the Piegans to the front of his tepee. After this was done, he
ordered them to take the younger bucks and cut their hair short, and to
cut a piece off each ear of all the others. During the time this was
being done, the Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles stood with their bows
strung, and others with rifles in their hands, ready to shoot if anyone
made a move to get away. After the marking was done, the Piegans were
taken outside of the camp and were told to go home as dogs and never
return or they would be killed as dogs. I witnessed all this.
On Christmas eve, 1862, we were in camp at Wolfe mountain. Chief Moise
invited us to his tent to eat a Christmas dinner with him. He knew
that it was Christmas day and respected it as such, for he had been
taught what the meaning of it was by Father De Smet. His wife cooked
dinner for us. She had fried doughnuts as good as any I ever ate, and
excellent yeast powder bread; we had buffalo tongue and all kinds of
meats. In all my life I never enjoyed a Christmas dinner better than I
did that Christmas eve of 1862 in the tepee of the Flathead chief near
Wolfe mountain.
Christmas morning I went on the top of what the Indians called Heart
mountain. My object was to try and look in the direction of Fort
Benton, for I knew we were not far from there, as I could see the Bear
Paw mountains plainly. We decided to leave the Indians and go to Fort
Benton. The Flathead chief sent six Indians to escort us through. It
took us two days and part of a night. The second day out we traveled on
a trail where the sage hens were as thick as I ever saw turkeys in a
barnyard, but the Indians would not allow us to shoot, fearing that it
might draw the attention of other Indians who were hostile to all of us.
Before the Indians started back we gave them tobacco and some matches,
and a fancy pipe for them to take to the chief. It was the 18th of
January, 1863, when we crossed the Missouri river at Fort Benton, and
the river at that time was perfectly free from ice. There were only a
few days of cold weather and but little snow that winter.
About the first of March, 1863, Thebeau and I started for the upper
country and got as far as Sun river the first day. Vail had charge of
the government farm, which was near where we crossed the stream. After
going over the hill in the Prickly Pear canyon, and while we were in
camp at a little spring W. C. Gillette came along with a cayuse pack
train on his way to Fort Benton to get goods for Bannock. Tom Clarey
and Jim Gourley were with him. Gillette had his sacks filled with gold
dust, and as the road agents were very troublesome at that time, he
mistook us for desperadoes; he went by and would not stop to talk with
us. From there we went to Montana Bar. By this time the immigrants had
nearly all left. Albert Agnel, Alvin H. Wilcox and John Peeterson were
there yet, besides a few others. John Peeterson and I sunk a shaft
twenty-five feet deep on the bar and found fifty cents to the pan on
bed rock. After that Peeterson and I went and surveyed a ditch (it is
the same big ditch that now conveys the water from the Prickly Pear
creek onto the bench land.) Our surveying apparatus was a triangle and
a plumb bob which we made ourselves.
Alvin H. Wilcox, Jesse Crooks, Albert Agnel, and Jim Marston were also
interested in the ditch. About the last of May I received word from
Bill Sweeny of the discovery of Alder gulch and that he had staked a
claim for me, and for me to come as quickly as possible, but it was
pretty late in June before I could leave to go to Alder, and when I
got there some one had taken possession of my claim, according to
miners’ rules, and those were if the owner was not there to represent
his claim it could not be held only so many days; consequently I went
to work for Bill Sweeny for $14 per day. After working for Sweeny for
several weeks, I decided to go back to the bar and do more prospecting.
Early in the summer of 1863, I found twenty-five cents to the pan on
a bar where the city of Helena is now. I filled the hole up again
and built a fire on the fresh dirt to conceal the place, with the
intention of going back; that was an old trick which was practiced by
the prospectors. As I was interested with John Peeterson in the ditch
and the mines on the bar (American bar), and as it was necessary for us
to have more sluice boxes, one day I went to cut logs to make lumber.
I was on the side of a mountain, when a log rolled and caught my leg
between it and a stump. It was some time before I could release myself,
and when I did so I found that my leg was broken, and that is why I am
lame now. There was no doctor to be had. I squeezed the broken place
together the best I could and wrapped it up in some bandages I made out
of a pair of overalls I had. That winter (1863-4) I stopped in a little
cabin. I hired a man named Talbot, who was a Baptist preacher, to cook
and stay with me; I paid him twenty dollars a week for his services and
companionship. All this time my leg was troubling me terribly. Knowing
Father Ravalli, in whose honor Ravalli county is named (he is now dead,
and peace be to his memory, for he was a good man), and hearing that he
was at the Mission, near where the Ulm station on the Montana Central
railroad is located, I decided to go and see him, for I knew that he
was a good physician. I gave a man named Merrill all my interest in
the mines to take me as far as Malcolm Clarke’s place at the head of
Prickly Pear canyon; from there a man named Morgan, from Fort Benton,
took me to the Mission, a distance of fifty-five miles, and he charged
me two hundred and fifty dollars, which was all the money I had. Father
Ravalli was not at the Mission, but Father Jurada was, he also being a
good surgeon. He told me that he could break the leg over again, but it
would be shorter. He operated on my leg, and by the summer of 1865 I
was able to work.
In 1867 I located the ranch where I am now, and have been ever since.
It is like a dream to me when I think of the old trails I traveled
over, forty years ago, and, on the other hand, it is a revelation to
listen to the rumbling of the heavy trains that pass to and fro on
the Montana Central railroad only a few miles from my door; while,
looking in another direction, I see clouds of smoke arising and hear
the whistle of the locomotives of the Great Falls and Canada railroad,
and looking in still another direction I see the city of Great Falls
and the towering smokestacks of its great smelters. Where once were
the lone trails I helped to blaze through a wilderness inhabited only
by wild beasts and savage men, I now see a flourishing city, and the
country around me dotted with fine homes and prosperous towns.
While looking back, my imaginary view is tinged with sadness as I
realize that the old days are gone forever; nevertheless my declining
years are made contented and happy by the knowledge that I have done
all that I could to convert this one-time wilderness into an empire, I
now lay down the rifle of the pioneer and the pick and shovel of the
prospector to pass the remainder of my days in the peace and content
that comes from the consciousness of having done my best to help
develop this western country that it might become the abiding place of
an intelligent and prosperous people. And now, in the sunset of life,
as I realize that before many years I shall strike the trail that leads
“over the great divide,” I rejoice that I can leave to my children a
name honored by being enrolled on the scroll of Montana’s pioneers.”
Now Mr. Brown is past seventy-five years of age and lives with his
family on a farm. Sun River is his postoffice. He is a well-preserved
man for his age and has a remarkably good memory. What I have written
here is but a fraction of that which he told me that evening of what
the West was forty-two years ago. The only way to get a true early
history of a country is to get such a narrative from its pioneers, and
surely John D. Brown should be counted as one of the early historians
of the state of Montana.
ROBERT VAUGHN.
January 4, 1900.
A PIONEER MINISTER.
As the following was written for this book by “Brother Van,” it needs
no introduction. The writer tells of the first services that he held
in Montana--when he fought the Nez Perces as well as sin and the whole
host of hell. He said: